As trends and technologies continue to accelerate at a pace faster than many marketers can match, the New Year is going to provide even more challenges for business-to-business marketers. With that in mind, here are what I believe are the top five most essential strategies you need to consider for 2015.
Omni-Channel Marketing
B2B marketers have been disproportionately focused on the shiny new marketing toy du jour – from mobile to display to social media to content marketing and back to mobile. With the rapid growth of digital consumption and what seems like the daily proliferation of social media channels, marketers are faced with more choices than ever when considering how they want to reach the business customer.
With each choice comes a certain amount of risk as marketers choosing to put a heavy investment in one channel may miss the untapped potential of another. This leaves a smaller margin for error as highly informed business consumers have become acutely aware of how to seek out information across a myriad of interactive channels, poll their networks and complete transactions.
Any effective B2B marketing strategy for 2015 should be one that integrates every channel across every device. This approach requires marketers – with the help of their agency – to understand the experience the customer is seeking when interacting with their brand. Omni-channel is a reflection of the wide variety of choices that customers have in how they engage a brand. The successful brand will enable their prospects to use all of the available channels.
Micro-Targeting
The proliferation of mobile, search and social analytics give us marketers all the tools we need to develop custom B2B strategies to hyper-target target customers with surgical precision – allowing us carve out the waste of traditional print and broadcast media and touch each prospect with the near intimacy of a one-to-one conversation.
Critical to creating these targeted messages is knowing who you’re talking to. Developing buyer personas allows you to craft and aim your marketing messaging with a higher degree of accuracy. As a digital-first agency, every campaign we develop is informed by the buyer personas of our clients. We look to yield as much information on these personas as possible, honing in on attributes such as their challenges, goals, background and the channels they use to research their decisions.
Committing to persona development lets you deep dive into needs, lifestyle, and motivations of your buyers. The work is well worth the results, which is the ability to construct more relevant content strategies throughout the buying cycle, post-purchase efforts, and account-based marketing activities. The more we understand their pains, the better we can create content that will point them in the right direction to address that pain.
Social Advertising
A dramatic shift has already begun towards paid social media advertising, a result of the decline in organic reach as social networks surge in popularity. This is a natural result of the growing competition for audience across these social platforms from bigger brands with more resources to spend on both organic and paid social.
As social networks and large publishers move away from earned media and towards paid media, B2B marketing teams will have to spend more time – and money – investing in paid or sponsored placements to engage hard-to-reach business targets. Changes to the Facebook algorithm in late 2013 have already produced a 44 percent decline in non-sponsored brand content in users’ newsfeeds. LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Pinterest now offer sponsored content placements and ads that promise specific reach.
The days of free social exposure are over and the only way to gain mindshare over the competition is to establish a budget to supplement your organic storytelling.
The key is to invest in those social properties that are working best for you and reinforce posts with strong calls to action (CTAs) and other supporting elements. For example, rather than embedding a link to a whitepaper download in the post, send interested users to a content landing page to extend the conversation. Then split test CTAs so you can get the right piece, in the right place, at the right time to further optimize every dollar spent.
Mobile
With more than 50 percent of internet traffic coming from mobile devices, B2B marketers must keep in mind that business prospects are still the same consumers outside of work that expect the same kind of omni-channel access to the types of digital experiences that consumer brands offer.
As B2B marketers, our challenge is to create these digital experiences to fit the preferences and needs of our buyer persona. More and more B2b brands are achieving omni-channel success with highly targeted digital properties that speak to very specific business users. And these efforts aren’t just flashy websites. They fold in mobile-optimized elements, offline activities and dynamic content offers to round out the personalized digital experience.
The key is to consider a “mobile-first” digital strategy so that it incorporates the totality of your content marketing and distribution strategy into dynamic display technology that adjusts content offers and image sizes based on the users’ screen resolution. Mobile is quickly becoming the hotbed of engagement in B2B marketing – if there is one race where you don’t want to get left behind – this is it.
High-Quality Visual Content
As brands turn into publishers, their content needs will span beyond grammatical accuracy and into the finer points of writing compelling copy adaptable across omni-channel platforms, crafted to resonate with the hyper-targeted personas we talked about above.
We are in an age of visual content where the need for well-crafted copy and visuals goes hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, one of the content marketers’ consistent pain points is not being able to produce enough to fill their content pipelines. This has lead forward-thinking marketers to seek out experienced agencies that specialize in creating masterfully written and visually gorgeous content specific to their buyer persona.
To do this most effectively, you must develop in-depth creative briefs with documentation that provides a complete view of what you’re trying to accomplish. Why?
- Articles with images get 94 percent more total views
- Including a Photo and a video in a press release increases views by over 45 percent
- Sixty percent of buyers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in a search result
- Sixty-seven percent of online buyers say the quality of a product image is “very important” in selecting a brand or purchasing a product
- Online buyers think that the quality of a products image is more important than product-specific information (63 percent), a long description (54 percent) and ratings and reviews (53 percent)
- There is a 37 percent higher level of engagement for photos over pure text
When it comes to marketing and communications, government contractors and public sector IT providers face a set of unique challenges. For one, the customer base of Federal, state and local decision makers responsible for purchasing technology products and services – ranging from CIOs and CTOs to program managers, IT managers and procurement officers –represents a finite group that can be difficult to reach.
Compounding this predicament is the fact that government contractors must not only market their brand, product and services to these decision makers, but also time these marketing efforts strategically. This means building awareness far enough in advance of a contract award, and then sustaining marketing and PR efforts throughout what can be a multi-year process from pre-RFP to the contract award – and even beyond due to potential contract protests, delays and budgetary obstacles.
Marketing to agency decision makers is just one piece of the puzzle. For small to mid-sized contractors, marketing and public relations efforts must often extend to larger prime contractors in order to ensure these lesser-known firms are on the radar when Primes are assembling teams to pursue contracts. Large contractors, for their part, must also market needs and capabilities to smaller partners that might hold an elusive product/service, market expertise, status or agency relationship.
We have assembled 6 ways that forward-thinking contractors and IT providers can grow their business and contract opportunities by looking beyond traditional marketing, advertising and public relations tactics.
Leverage responsive landing pages
esponsive design is a critical website approach for providing customers with a seamless experience across all device sizes. With a responsive website, government contractors and IT providers can be in front of buyers at every step of their online journey. A user viewing a website on the go via a mobile device can have the same powerful experience as when sitting in their office.
Responsive websites provide continuity between different viewing contexts, remaining completely agnostic to the type of device used and the size of the screen the user has. Responsive websites also rank higher in search engines’ rankings, as Google recommends responsive web design because having a single URL for desktop and mobile sites makes it easier for Google to discover content and for Google’s algorithms – which are constantly changing – to assign indexing properties to content.
It was the need for a responsive website that brought GovDelivery, which enables public sector organizations to connect with more people and to get those people to act, to Bluetext.
As the number one referrer of traffic to hundreds of government websites, including IRS.gov, SBA.gov, FEMA.gov, IN.gov, and BART.gov, the GovDelivery Communications Cloud is an enterprise-class, cloud-based platform that allows government organizations to create and send billions of messages to more than 60 million people around the world. Bluetext was hired by GovDelivery to help them reach public sector organizations that can benefit with tremendous cost savings while reaching more people, automating complex communications and driving mission value through deeper engagement with the public.
For this responsive design project, Bluetext conceived and designed a responsive landing page with an infographic demonstrating the benefits of using GovDelivery for government agencies as the centerpiece of the campaign. We also developed a responsive email template and infographic poster to be used across many marketing channels.
Extend reach and share budget with partner campaigns
While going it alone from a marketing and public relations perspective provides a company with more control over a campaign, it also can be costly and restrict the reach and impact that could otherwise be achieved by aligning in an innovative way with industry partners.
Bluetext has worked on numerous occasions with industry partners that align around a specific campaign targeting government decision makers. Govplace, a leading enterprise IT solutions provider exclusively to the public sector, turned to Bluetext to develop FedInnovation, a destination designed to help government agency executives get the latest information on current technology challenges and solutions for big data, cloud, security, mobility and storage. Developed in conjunction with leading technology providers including Dell, Intel Security and VMWare, it includes exclusive content, videos, blogs, and real-time social feeds.
FedInnovation combines relevant, fresh content, complementary offers, and financial resources to deliver an educational platform to drive awareness and leads for Govplace across its target market. The development of platforms is a continued focus for Bluetext as we look to conceptualize, design and develop creative solutions that deliver measurable business impact for our clients. It is increasingly clear that customers of our clients demand unique experiences with premium content delivered in an easy to consume manner.
Another partner campaign targeting U.S. public sector executed by Bluetext was FutureAgency.com, a digital content experience effort on behalf of McAfee and Intel that depicted virtually a “future government agency.” For this project, Bluetext created a virtual experience around client subject matter experts in an effort to present content for government decision makers in a more engaging fashion. Rather than static white papers and marketing slicks that often go unread or unfinished, Bluetext created an experience whereby avatars of actual company thought leaders were created, and they delivered presentations on topics in a virtual conference environment. The clients found length and quality of site visitor engagement superior to that of traditional white papers and similar content.
Create compelling digital experiences to reach decision makers
The web has become a go-to resource for decision makers to research products and services prior to purchase. Product sheets, white papers and other pieces of online collateral can be useful supporting resources for government decision makers, but will hardly help contractors stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Recognizing this, government contractors and IT providers are creating more dynamic, immersive digital experiences that can more effectively engage target constituencies and impact the decision making process. Additionally, these experiences are molded to be as valuable as any in-person interaction site visitors would have with products and services.
A recent Bluetext project showcases a forward-thinking technology provider, CSC, which was seeking to ensure prospective customers could have a similar experience as they would if they were physically at CSC’s corporate headquarters.
Bluetext designed and built CSC’s Digital Briefing Center, a virtual experience where clients and CSC’s entire ecosystem can come to learn about CSC’s key technology conversations across its target verticals.
Bluetext designed a virtual office building where each floor represents a specific vertical industry, and visitors can learn about CSC’s key solutions and experience across cloud computing, big data, applications, cyber security, and mobility. While not specific to the government market, it is indicative of how “stickier” digital experiences are reshaping how existing and prospective customers interact with content.
Highlight customer innovation
No matter how large or well-known a government contractor/Federal IT provider is, gaining approval from an agency to speak publicly about a technology project is often mission impossible. Agencies must be careful not to appear to endorse a specific vendor in public comments or a press release quote, and even when project leaders are amenable, the process often grinds to a halt with the more conservative public affairs officers.
As such, vendors often have their hands tied on how to showcase a successful project so that other agencies – or even other decision makers within the same agency – will take notice. An approach that can bear more fruit involves shining the spotlight on an agency leader or the agency itself through awards and speaking opportunities.
Multiple editorial publications and associations hold annual award programs that showcase outstanding IT projects and agency leaders at the federal, state and local government level. Agencies tend to be more open to sharing an IT story through an award because it demonstrates innovation and can assist with employee morale and retention.
Beyond award programs, there is also significant benefit in generating media coverage and awareness of state & local customer projects. These agency customers tend to be more amenable to participating in public relations campaigns, and the drawing attention to these projects can demonstrate capabilities to prospective Federal customers as well.
Develop targeted campaign to pursue a specific contract
As contractors and IT providers know all too well, winning an agency contract requires a very different sales cycle than a small business user signing up online for Dropbox or a similar “as-a-Service” software offering.
At some level, there will always be marketing activities designed to reach decision-makers across multiple civilian or military agencies – and in some cases both segments. These external efforts may involve communicating product capabilities, service chops, or the expertise of the contractor’s team. But in today’s hyper-competitive market for agency contracts, developing innovative, targeted campaigns in pursuit of a specific contract or that are designed to reach decision makers at a particular agency, can make the difference between a game-changing contract win and a devastating loss.
Bluetext is increasingly tasked to partner with contractors in developing innovative branding and outreach campaigns around a specific contract pursuit. In early 2014, L-3 Communications, in partnership with Harris Corporation, hired Bluetext to help them pursue the Air Force’s $1B Satellite Control Network (AFSCN) Modifications, Maintenance & Operations (CAMMO) Contract.
Bluetext worked with the L-3/Harris Capture teams to develop a campaign strategy that would position them as a Prime by highlighting the many advantages they bring to the table. The overarching campaign theme Bluetext developed is:
“The Power of Partnership, From Vision to Reality”
The creative strategy of this project began with the core concept of the ad, “from vision to reality.” The left side of the ad is a wireframe representing the vision with the right side representing its reality. After the wireframe of the satellite was created, it was overlaid on top of the red diagonal to create a striking visual element to draw attention to the campaign. The first series of ads were placed in high visibility areas inside of Colorado Springs Airport, a key travel hub for Air Force brass. The media plan for the campaign also includes online, print and OOH media placed strategically to maximize reach and frequency throughout the entire contract RFP and award lifecycle.
Focus on agency challenge, not yourself
Dramatic changes in staffing and mission of government IT media outlets means that the days of getting a product reviewed or corporate profile written are for the most part a thing of the past. As such, contracts and IT providers must get far more creative when it comes to communicating capabilities.
Government IT press don’t want to hear about products. They want to hear about trends and challenges sweeping through agencies, and how contractors and IT providers are developing solutions to solve those challenges.
This was the backdrop for a media strategy Bluetext architected for Adobe Government. Over the past few years, government-wide budget cuts have been swift and relatively unsparing in their impact on agency in-person conferences and training events. This presented a significant challenge for agencies seeking to maintain the collaboration and education benefits these events delivered.
The challenge dovetailed with Adobe’s web conferencing solution Adobe Connect, which was seeing a rise in demand in the public sector due to pullbacks in physical, in-person conferences. Bluetext built a PR campaign around this angle that included a pair of thought leadership articles (one targeting the broad federal IT community and one targeting military decision makers), generating multiple articles around this topic in key federal, state and local media outlets, including:
Federal Computer Week – Budget cuts push conferences online
Washington Technology – Budget cuts, scandal fuel videoconferencing boom
Federal Computer Week – Could virtual meetings replace conferences in sequestration age?
Defense News – Communicating in an era of canceled conferences
Federal Computer Week – Defense Connect Online hits milestone
State Tech – Mobile Video Conferencing Powers Collaboration on the Go
Federal Computer Week – DOD connects online to cut travel
Government Executive/NextGov – Agencies are saving millions with virtual events
Federal Computer Week – Cutting costs with virtual conferencing
Reaching and impacting government decision makers requires government contractors and IT providers to push beyond the status quo and engage with partners able to help develop and deliver innovative campaigns to grow their business and increase contract opportunities.
Bluetext Survey Shows How Government Executives Make IT Decisions
Survey Results in Federal Computer Week
Federal agencies can be great customers because they remain some of the biggest spenders and their budgets stay fairly stable even during economic downturns. Yet sales and marketing teams used to marketing to consumer or commercial enterprise customers often find that their efforts fall flat in the government space — wasting everyone’s time in the process.
That’s because talking to the government customer can require a different approach, including the channels used to reach that audience and the messages included. Understanding those needs and preferences can help contractors and feds alike.
We recently surveyed 150 top government executives involved in the decision-making process for IT purchases, to understand directly how they get the information that helps inform their purchasing decisions. The results provide a road map for targeting this audience — and a valuable look in the mirror for agency leaders who wonder if there are better ways to gather the information they need.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT FCW.COM
6 Ways Government Contractors Can Use Innovative Digital Marketing and PR Strategies To Win Business
When it comes to marketing and communications, government contractors and public sector IT providers face a set of unique challenges. For one, the customer base of Federal, state and local decision makers responsible for purchasing technology products and services – ranging from CIOs and CTOs to program managers, IT managers and procurement officers –represents a finite group that can be difficult to reach.
Compounding this predicament is the fact that government contractors must not only market their brand, product and services to these decision makers, but also time these marketing efforts strategically. This means building awareness far enough in advance of a contract award, and then sustaining marketing and PR efforts throughout what can be a multi-year process from pre-RFP to the contract award – and even beyond due to potential contract protests, delays and budgetary obstacles.
READ THE FULL BLOG POST HERE:
6 Ways Government Contractors Can Use Innovative Digital Marketing and PR Strategies To Win Business
Federal agencies can be great customers because they remain some of the biggest spenders and their budgets stay fairly stable even during economic downturns. Yet sales and marketing teams used to marketing to consumer or commercial enterprise customers often find that their efforts fall flat in the government space — wasting everyone’s time in the process.
That’s because talking to the government customer can require a different approach, including the channels used to reach that audience and the messages included. Understanding those needs and preferences can help contractors and feds alike.
We recently surveyed 150 top government executives involved in the decision-making process for IT purchases, to understand directly how they get the information that helps inform their purchasing decisions. The results provide a road map for targeting this audience — and a valuable look in the mirror for agency leaders who wonder if there are better ways to gather the information they need.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT FCW.COM
Ok, admit it. Marketing these days feels like high school. The cool kids are throwing around new terms every day. As you sit in meetings, meet with agencies and follow “thought leaders” on Twitter, someone uses a new term and you have no idea what it means but don’t want to raise your hand to admit it. You finally feel confident when someone talks about a responsive website, and then they start talking about adaptive response…UGH!
It’s ok. The web, content marketing, digital, inbound, lead scoring, social…they are all changing so fast it is very hard to keep up.
Don’t despair. Here it is. The “I’m No Dummy Guide to Marketing Lingo.” A list of terms that get thrown around all the time that we all wish we knew.
Go ahead…Print it out…Post it on your door… turn it into your own little study guide. You will feel like the smartest kid in class in no time. And let us know if terms are missing as new ones are emerging every day.
The DC tech startup community has a chip on its shoulder. That’s not a bad thing; it motivates entrepreneurs and area leaders committed to advancing the interests of the DC tech community to fight for respect. This respect can assume many forms, including funding, an available pool of highly educated, skilled workers, or just positive publicity and attention relative to Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and other tech hubs that seem to glisten more in the eyes of venture capitalists and industry pontificators.
As I networked and dined at MAVA’s annual holiday luncheon last week and reflected on the week that was in the local tech space, a scene from Jerry Maguire popped into my head. It was when Tom Cruise and Kelly Preston feed each other breakfast in the buff. Ok, that’s not the scene, but figured I’d throw it in there to make sure everyone is paying attention. It was Jerry Maguire racing home after the football game, bearing his soul to his wife, and exclaiming, “Tonight…our little company had a very big night. A very, very big night.” The flurry of venture capital raise announcements by local companies last week in fact represents a very, very big week for the DC tech community.
The three venture capital raises undermined a prevailing but increasingly antiquated notion that technology innovation emerging from the nation’s capital is government-skewed, exclusively b2b or, for lack of a better word, boring. Optoro, a startup that caught my eye approximately five years ago as a presenting company at a MAVA event, announced a $50 million funding raise on December 10th. The company stood out to me that day because the business model was simple (heck, even I could understand it which is no easy task) and it was clear to everyone in the room what the industry pain point was (retailers were not efficiently and cost-effectively able to sell excess and returned inventory), and that Optoro has developed a very clever way to address it (a cloud-based, multi-channel selling technology enabling retailers to optimally manage their reverse logistics).
The day before Optoro announced its massive funding raise, marketing software firm TrackMaven snagged a $14M Series B round from NEA, Bowery Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and others. TrackMaven is striking a chord with overwhelmed digital marketers seeking products to help better track and act on relevant data related to earned media, SEO, ads, content marketing and social media efforts.
The final venture capital raise last week is a company I’ve been privileged enough to call a client for the past several years – Canvas. The Reston-based company, which raised $9 million, has quickly emerged as the global leader in mobile apps for collecting and sharing business information. Canvas is truly disrupting how work gets done by enabling businesses to replace expensive and inefficient paper forms and processes with customizable mobile apps for smartphones and tablets, with no programming or IT required. There are also now more than 15,000 apps in the Canvas mobile business application store – apps that can easily be downloaded, customized and shared by Canvas’ growing community of partners and subscribers.
Not only do these funding raises reflect the diversity of startups and challenger brands that now call the DC area home, but also strengthens the region’s global position. Canvas’ Jason Ganz reaffirmed as much in his recent blog post that analyzed every startup funding round the last ten years. Among several compelling pieces of data, Ganz calculated that the DC region has 138 funding rounds listed so far in 2014 – making it the 7th highest region for startup funding globally. For the sake of comparison, there were 52 area funding rounds in 2009 and 157 funding rounds last year.
It was a very, very big week for the Greater Washington technology community, one that holds the promise for even greater activity and growth next year.
My exposure to Israeli technology companies over the past several years has admittedly gravitated towards cyber security, video surveillance and biometric startups like BriefCam, FST21 and others often born out of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or Israeli Military Intelligence. Whether it has been at ASIS or other security industry conferences, I come away impressed with the sophistication of the technology and potential applications for both commercial and government purposes.
One of the reasons the Showcase of Maryland/Israel Business – which took place on November 18th in Silver Spring, MD – caught my attention is that it extended beyond some of the aforementioned security categories to robotics, e-discovery software, medical equipment, and mobile emergency response solutions. The event was hosted by the Maryland/Israel Development Center, a non-profit organization promoting trade and investment between Maryland and Israeli businesses and research institutions.
In some cases, the companies were Israeli-based and looking to push into the U.S. market more aggressively, while others had Israeli origins but had been operating in Maryland for several years. As someone who has tracked and worked with scores of Maryland technology companies and startups – first as founder of a Maryland Tech PR firm and currently in my role as Partner at Bluetext – it is exciting to see collaboration and efforts by the Maryland Tech community to foster closer ties with Israeli tech firms.
Some of the more provocative demonstrations and companies I spoke with included:
Roboteam – This company designs, develops and manufactures cutting edge, user-oriented, multi-purpose, unmanned platforms and controllers for Defense, Law Enforcement and Public Safety missions. One of its unmanned ground vehicles was on display and operational at the event, where it demonstrated its ability to not only move on flat service but also ascend a podium staircase.
iControl Universal Collaboration Solutions – Collaborative Business Intelligence firm based in Burtonsville, Maryland helping retailers gain unified data insights across its supplier network.
NextNine – Cyber Security firm focused on oil, gas, mining, defense and other critical infrastructure verticals.
RADiFlow – This company provides secure industrial Ethernet solutions for critical infrastructure applications.
Video has become an essential element in nearly every integrated marketing campaign. Whether it’s to highlight a key executive or subject expert, capture a discussion that demonstrates leadership on a topic or issue, or provide a better explanation of a complicated subject, video delivers a strong platform from which to tell a story.
The challenge with video is that it can be of poor quality and doesn’t hold the audience’s attention when not done well. While it may seem simple to set an executive behind a desk and start running the video camera while he or she starts talking, there are a lot of stumbling blocks when taking this easy path. Offices and even conference rooms can be cramped, making it difficult to get the best angles. The lighting is always uneven. Shadows in the wrong places are a constant issue. And if you’re doing a series of video interviews, each office will look and feel different on camera. In addition, sound quality is particularly hard, especially in today’s modern offices where air is constantly moving through the ventilation systems. While often barely audible in person, lavaliere microphones are extremely sensitive and amplify that hidden sound.
A better solution is getting the individuals out of their office and putting them in a controlled setting before a curtain or green screen. This approach offers a number of important advantages for a compelling and quality video experience:
1) The lighting will be consistent across every video. Shadows can be controlled, and office clutter is removed from the scene.
2) Audio can be controlled, with ambient sound kept to a minimum.
3) Backdrops, colors and tones can be chosen to meet the mood of the topic or the intended feel of the interview.
4) Multiple cameras can be more easily used, offering more interesting ways to edit the final piece.
5) Multiple videos in a series can have a similar look and feel, making them look like part of the package rather than random takes shot in different locations.
Bluetext often uses black curtains as well as green screens to achieve the right look for our clients’ videos. Here are a few examples that should get every marketer thinking about a better way to capture executives, thought leaders, experts and customers as part of successful marketing campaigns.
Use the Background to Set the Tone. For the launch of a new program called Smart Degree that enlists adult learners in college courses to complete their degrees, the education services company Nelnet enlisted Bluetext to capture a single mother explaining her challenges in obtaining those college credits. Because this was about those struggling to improve their career and economic status, we chose a heavy black curtain for a serious tone. We shot the video with two cameras, one from the front and a second with a side perspective, to give us room for close-ups and for editing. While we didn’t use an interviewer in the shoot, we had the mother look slightly off-camera to suggest that she was engaged in a conversation explaining her personal challenges. We shot four different takes, and the two-camera shoot made the video more interesting to watch and easier to edit. We added a hint of soft focus to soften the features and tone down the intensity of the lighting.
For a second video in the series, we took a different approach. This time, we were capturing a university executive explaining the value and benefits of the Smart Degree program. We used a green screen and chose an off-white background in post-production. This color selection gave a totally different tone to the video, offering an upbeat perspective on the value of Smart Degree. It also allowed us to decrease the contrast and add warmth to the final product.
Combine a Green Screen and a Backdrop for a Series of Interviews. For a campaign aimed at the Federal market, NetApp and Thundercat asked for a series of five experts to discuss ways for agencies to consolidate their data centers for more efficiency and to meet government mandates. We created a network interview environment, emulating Charlie Rose and the way he uses a dark studio to impart a sense of gravity and weight to his interviews.
Using a long black curtain to absorb light and give a sense of “infinity” to the scene, for each interview we placed the expert at the far corner of a conference table and focused one camera slightly off-center at their face. I played the role of the interviewer, lofting broad questions that allowed them to talk about the subject. The second camera was slightly over my shoulder, setting up the interview scene. We also captured long-shots of the two of us talking before the interview began. To introduce each segment, we enlisted the services of a well-known journalist and influencer in the government technology space. We placed him before a green screen to make the short introductions, and then overlaid those shots onto the interview long-shots. The effect is as if the he were in the studio with us.
This approach serves several purposes. First, it allows each of the interviews to have the same look and feel so they don’t seem random or disjointed. Second, the black curtains bring a professional tone to the videos. And third, the interview style and introduction make the segments more interesting and engaging to the audience.
Try Something Different to Keep the Audience Engaged. Technology giants McAfee and Intel were looking for a more interesting way to provide video lectures when highlighting their new solutions. As an alternative to capturing their experts behind a podium, we created an entirely different look and feel. We captured each expert in front of a green screen as if they were speaking before a large audience. A still of the first frame of each video was captured and placed inside a digitally-created, 3-D modeled “Agency of the Future.”
As the visitor to the site moves around the virtual building, they can select from each of the discussions by clicking on the still image. That image immediately comes to life as the video begins to play, and simulates a live presentation. As an added feature, we also placed the video inside a larger monitor screen in each video scene next to the speaker, similar to how jumbo screens are used in large auditoriums. That added feature gives visual interest and a touch of reality to a virtual environment. The Agency of the Future has been a huge success for Intel and McAfee, with visitors staying on site far longer than other campaigns they had run.
Video should be interesting, engaging and compelling to be effective. Understanding the options and the value of backdrops, curtains and green screens can make the difference between having your customers take notice and losing their interest.
2014 has been a year of amazing changes in the world of marketing, where micro-targeting via social platforms is now mainstream, banner ads are becoming passe, personalized content is in, native and sponsored ads are growing in popularity, video is getting shorter, and a wide range of other evolutionary marketing trends are exploding on the scene–all designed to help companies and organizations identify and reach their customers. And guess what? The sky hasn’t fallen, at least not yet. But looking at 2014 is almost, well, old news. As fast as digital transformation has hit us this year, it will move that much faster next year. So we at Bluetext thought this would be a good time to start looking ahead to 2015. We asked a wide range of senior marketing executives–including technology leaders, information services providers, financial industry start-ups, and even top trade associations–to gaze into their crystal balls and share with us their Big Bet for 2015. We’ve compiled those below, and think you’ll find their insight provocative and challenging.
BET #1. PREDICTIVE MODELING
by NICK PANAYI of CSC Director, Global Brand & Digital Marketing
As we look forward to next year and beyond, I can tell you honestly that the “next big thing” in marketing has never been clearer to me. What I believe will separate good marketers from exceptional ones is the exploding field of predictive intelligence.
We all have abundant data now. And we all have real-time marketing dashboards that act as a high-definition rear-view mirror of our customers’ digital footprints. That’s table stakes. What gets real interesting moving forward is the ability to leverage increasingly powerful predictive modeling tools to peer into the future and optimize your marketing efforts before they even start! Predictive modeling allows you to extract maximum value from the investments you already made in your digital ecosystem and the knowledge you’ve gathered about your customers’ digital body language…..
Read more about Predictive Modeling, and what top executives from organizations such as Georgetown University, NetApp, and others think is in store for 2015 by registering below.
Standing out in a sea of 400 of the world’s leading cyber security vendors and startups is no easy feat. Each year, more than 28,000 cyber professionals swarm to the RSA Conference North America to experience the latest and greatest of what the industry has to offer.
For emerging and even established cyber security vendors, few opportunities like RSA exist where so many existing and potential customers are accessible. PR and marketing planning for RSA begins months before the event itself, and can be expansive in nature – ranging from message development and creating innovative, dedicated landing pages to booking and providing on-site support for press and analyst briefings.
Capturing the attention of decision makers, press and analysts at RSA 2015 will be no easy feat. Reporters and analysts are bombarded with hundreds of briefing requests, often reserving 1×1 slots for familiar names with significant announcements to make. That said, success is possible and there are strategies that do work. Here are 5 tips for generating buzz and briefings at RSA 2015.
Don’t wait until RSA pitch to connect with reporters
Your firm may have relationships with some reporters and analysts, and lack them with others. Fair or not, reporters are going to pay more attention to emails from PR practitioners they know – particularly when it comes to sifting through 200-300 conference meeting requests. In one of his parting columns for Forbes, A Day In The Life Of A Tech Reporter’s Email Inbox, contributor J.J. Calao broke down one day’s worth of emails. Of the 34 PR story pitch emails that day, he responded to six of them – and he personally knew five of the six he responded to and did not respond to 29 pitches from publicists he didn’t know.
The point is this: many PR professionals worry about reaching out to reporters they don’t have strong relationships with before the RSA pitch – thinking it is better to wait until they have “big news” to get their attention. The problem is that your news probably isn’t as big as you think, and if you wait until the moment when a reporter is receiving the highest volume of pitches they get all year to try and break through, you will be out of luck.
Instead, find a way to get on the radar of influencers before the RSA pitch to make a connection. This could be as simple as tweeting the reporter in response to a recent article they have written, or alerting the reporter to new cyber security research. It is hard enough to try, in a single brief email or phone pitch, to explain what your company does and then explain any news announcement. Use a pre-RSA pitch strategy to expose the reporter or analyst to your brand and where you fit into the cyber security ecosystem. Then, the RSA pitch can cut right to the chase on news being announced.
Understand what to announce
There are reporters at RSA who will conceivably be interested in new products and writing product round-ups. But to pitch reporters who have, understandably, grown cynical about new product proclamations, it is very risky to have this be the anchor of your outreach strategy. At the same time, reporters are not interested in hearing your CEO’s “perspectives on top cyber threats” or “insights into the next vulnerability that will be exploited by cyber criminals.”
What reporters may be interested in is provocative new research your firm has conducted that supports any trend position you are staking out or that is being overlooked in the current cyber conversation; or customer case studies/customer-based research that attaches real-world examples to evolving trends. You can announce products at RSA, but the product story must fit into a broader narrative that is supported by data and/or customers.
Don’t go it alone
The limited amount of time reporters and analysts now have for 1×1 meetings at RSA borders on the comical, as the time windows have shrunk to as little as 15-20 minutes. I can’t even run through what I had for breakfast in 15 minutes let alone have a meaningful conversation that a reporter will remember at the end of a day full of 32 quarter-hour briefings.
Make the reporter’s life easier by killing two or three birds with one stone. Is your cyber security product part of a broader suite with partner solutions that a customer is using? If so, coordinate a single plan of attack with these partners that will add greater weight and simplify the story. Instead of a reporter getting a similar, overlapping pitch from three vendors, they get one tight, singular pitch that ties everything together. This approach is particularly valuable for emerging cyber brands that partner with a more established brand with established inroads to key reporters.
Working with partners, you can also set up landing pages in advance of RSA and direct influencers to key information on that site. This can whet the appetite of influencers and drive momentum into the conference.
Research Conference Product/Company Awards
RSA has meaningful award and innovation programs, such as the RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox Program, that offer a credibility check when communicating with customer decision makers, partners, press and analyst. These award deadlines are several weeks in advance of the conference and require the client to have sufficient advanced knowledge it will be announcing a new product at the show.
Engage on social if not in-person
For cyber security reporters and analysts you are not able to connect with in person at conferences, engage on Twitter to in advance of and during RSA to identify what is capturing their interest. Finding a key reporter at a large conference is akin to the proverbial needle in the haystack. You can increase your chances by following these influencers on Twitter, and perhaps one might post that they are headed into a particular panel session – thus shrinking that haystack considerably.
For everyone at RSA, there are also hundreds of others who want to attend but cannot for budget, schedule and myriad other reasons. Use your presence at RSA to deliver on-the-ground intel from sessions, themes, and demos, and promote that you will be doing this in advance of the Conference.